I am NOT hacking your website!

My readers know that I am not a stats whore. My site is popular because I have written about Tommy’s death (when I took an ASL class) and because I was an early fan of the movie the Boondock Saints. That and other popular posts about internet security and passwords have given me the “blessing” of a good google rank… so I should be happy right?

Over the past year I have been posting mostly thoughs and rants, I hardly ever review movies and books like I used to. My only recent attempt at more readers was an interview experiment. I don’t run any memes, I don’t play on technorati or bloggeries anymore. The readers I do have I appreciate greatly. I use Askimet as a spam stopper in wordpress and since I have started using it I have forgotten how much comment spam I do get.

Since I started blogging in 2004 I have received only one piece of hate mail that was rather amusing, and then last week I got another… the subject line read “Ashamed”

I don’t know who you are, nor do I care to know. I think you are despicable and you should be ashamed of yourself. Hacking into to people’s legitimate website and adding all your junk code with links to your blog is loathsome.
If you are even a remotely decent human being you may end up replying to my email. At minimum you should NEVER, EVER hack into people’s websites again. You should say several prayers in attempt to attain forgiveness for the ridiculously selfish nature of your actions. You should post some type of public apology on your blog as well.
In case you haven’t noticed, this is hate mail to you. You should be ashamed.

So… after initially laughing a little at the accusations I thought about it further and since the person asked me to reply I did. I was polite and tried to explain to her that I don’t hack websites, and that a spammer is probably using a badly secure site to test their code. I am not proud of the fact that links (most of them non existent since the domain is the only accurate part of the code they injected) to my website are being maliciously placed on people’s legitimate web code.

I have since received a couple of other e-mails about the matter, so it has happened to other sites. One even smart enough to ask me if I had payed someone for SEO optimization. Which I have not… I don’t make money writing in this website and have no plans on monetizing it so there is no need for that.

In conclusion. If you find some code injected into your website that happens to point to mine…

1) I did not hack your website. I have no intention and if you happen to check your logs, send me any of the offending IPs so I can add them to my block list.

2) Check with your ISP about the security of your network. If someone can modify your webpages, they have access to a lot more.

3) Be careful when paying people to “optimize” your website. Do not give them passwords or access to your files. Package your site and send it to them, revise the code before posting it back to your server.

4) NOTHING is free. If you see some “template” out there for free, don’t trust it. The code might have malicious parts in it. Unless you know what all the files are, do not upload them to your webserver.

5) Pay a reputable web developer to design your website. I would personally not hand the keys to my car to a person that has taken a toaster apart and expect them to know how to take an engine apart and put it back together. There is a HUGE difference between a web designer, a web developer and a WEBMASTER!

A web designer will make your site pretty.
A web developer will make your site do nifty things.
A web master will make sure your site is MANAGED correctly and not vandalized BY HACKERS!

So secure your websites people, or a hacker out there might link back to a blog that does not even know they exist!

One comment on “I am NOT hacking your website!”

That IS funny. I’m also sure it happens far more than the average Internetz user realizes. It’s one of the reasons I don’t change themes often, as I have to parse each PHP page line by line looking for maliscious code or back doors…Nice of them to drop you a line, huh? I know I always like mail… ;’)